Kansas And Colorado
August 14, 2007
To many people a trip across Kansas is simply wasted time spent getting to any place that has anything worth seeing. While the area around the I-70 corridor has some miles that would tend to enhance this opinion, a drive of a few miles away from it can provide sights of a very surprising nature. Rock City Park is in Minneapolis, Kansas. It is a five-acre area where around 70 millions ago concretions were formed in the Dakota Sandstone, and were then subsequently exposed over millions of years of erosion. About two hundred concretions that are up to twenty-seven foot in diameter are exposed. In Marquette, Kansas, which is fifty-three miles away, is another outcropping of similar but less exposed formations. So it is possible that there are thousands or even millions of concretions just a few feet underground and within a few miles. The Dakota sandstone formation extends from Canada to Mexico and crops up in some famous locations like the Garden Of The Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Bryce Canyon in Utah. A visit to Rock City Park need only take a short length of time with ample time for exploring and climbing on the rocks or a longer time with a picnic. Visitors are allowed and even encouraged to climb on the rocks and in a couple instances crawl through the hole through the middle of the rock. Over a hundred years ago the settlers that saw these formations left their signatures upon the rocks and the Indians that lived in the area left their signs long before the white man came to the area and discovered the rocks.
DAKOTA SANDSTONE CONCRETIONS IN ROCK CITY PARK, MINNEAPOLIS, KANSAS
Returning to a place that has provided a great deal of pleasure over the years always brings the anticipation of additional pleasure. There are many of those places available to us, and with our travels the number of places is increasing. Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park is one of those places for us. Trail Ridge Road is the highest continuous paved automobile road in the US. It passes over the continental divide at 12,183 foot at its high point. There are higher roads for autos but the roads end at a high point and require a return by the same road. Erma and I have been traveling Trail Ridge Road since 1962 and may have gone over before with our parents. Since the road officially opened in 1932 we have been traveling it for sixty percent of its existence. It does not seem possible that we have known such an important road for so long. Along Trail Ridge Road we have seen thousands of deer, thousands of elk, and probably hundreds of bighorn sheep over the years. One fall we saw at least five hundred elk in single herd in one of the meadows. Back in the 1960’s there were no regulations concerning the feeding the chipmunks, ground squirrels, birds and other small animals. In fact the merchants of Estes Park and Grand Lake sold raw peanuts to feed the animals. The new regulations ban any feeding of wildlife. I am glad that I could feed them when it was legal and my daughter could do it also. In all the days we have spent in the park and all the pictures I have taken of the elk I have never had one try to express anything like this cow was apparently was trying to do. Could she have been thinking about the food ban? She trotted near us like we were not even there, scattering people that were in front of her. One excited tourist stated that he had never seen a moose so close. It was unfortunate that my daughter had to tell him that it was a cow elk. Still I think he was impressed and hurried on to see the herd of at least sixty that was a short distance up the road. Seeing that many elk on a hillside is impressive no matter how many times it happens.
COW ELK IN ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK ON TRAIL RIDGE ROAD
At one time or another you have all been told, “You can never go home”. Since the last POTR I could say that I have looked for home in two places and I did not find it either place. I was in Princeton, Kansas where I spent age one through a couple years of college. I attended my 47th year high school reunion. It was great to see many people that attended school with me, but I was also disappointed in not seeing many schoolmates that did not come to the reunion. The school was closed in 1964 and was razed. It was a small school in a small town and was consolidated with several other small schools from small towns. Much has changed in the town, businesses have closed, the railroad tracks have been removed, and the elevators are falling down from lack of care. But on the good side, new homes have been built, new businesses have opened near the highway, a new highway route has eliminated a dangerous pair of curves. While in my mind it is still “home”, I did not feel any of the emotions of home. Perhaps “home” is the place a person changes from a child to an adult. They tore down the house and put in a Wal-Mart, they burned the barn and raised a condo, and they plowed up the cornfield and paved it for a parking lot. Even though the house is still there and a new barn has been built and crops are visible from the highway it feels like they are gone. I went from Princeton, Kansas to Wheat Ridge, Colorado and found that so much has changed in the three years I have been gone that I almost feel like I have come into a new town. Some friends are still living in the same homes so all has not changed, but to me there is a different feel. At one time it was home, so I wonder if the place a person has raised their children also becomes home.
The feelings that I have been experiancing have helped to support a theory that I developed many years ago. I believe that during the lifetime of a person there are many changes that alter the basic person until it can be said that they are different people. I would estimate that this happens on an average of every five to ten years. In the beginnings of life it is easy to see and frequent. A one-year-old child is very different than the newborn child. The two-year-old child is not the same child as the one-year-old. Swift changes also happen because of life events. The first time I became aware of this was about 1962. I came home from college and spent some time with my best friend from high school. I said to my Mother, “He had changed a lot while I had been at college. It is like he is a different person.” My Mother being a wise woman said, “No, he is the same, he has changed little. It is you that has changed because of college.” Her words made an impact on me. I can name some other points at which I became a different person. When I became a husband, and when I became a father and likely when I became a retiree. To be sure each person that I became had many of the characteristics that I developed as a young person. But with all this said I understand more than ever the statement, you can never go home. In the first place, home changes in the name of progress, and in the second place, the person becomes a new person and sees the old home with different paradigms.
I have heard a good case made for life being a circle. A person is born, they grow to adults, and then give birth to another child. This makes a circle. Then the children grow to adults and have more children, thus completing another circle. I would like to suggest that life is more like a door spring. All the circles are there, but each time that a circle is completed the new point is not quite the same, it is a bit further on. There are things that are the same under casual scrutiny and it looks like it is just the same. We visited a great little museum and the restored Fort Vasquez about thirty miles north of Denver. In 1835 fur-traders Louis Vasquez and Andrew Sublett built the fort along the South Platte River for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company with a license to trade with the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians. Beaver pelts used to make beaver hats that were the style of gentlemen at that time was a major portion of their trade. They would trade with the Indians and trappers for Hudson Bay blankets, brass kettles and pots and pans, also for whiskey, silk handkerchiefs, ivory combs and other item that were desired. A few years later, about 1841 the style of a gentlemen’s hat suddenly changed from beaver to silk. The drop in demand for beaver pelts and competition with other local forts prompted the sale of the fort for $800.00. Within a year the fort was abandoned and the purchase price of the fort was never collected. In addition all the area forts were abandoned for commercial use. Now if the connection of this 1835 fort to the circle of life of 2007 has not occurred to you it is the hats of then and the dog food and toys of today. In1841 hats changed from beaver to silk; which was produced in China. The dog food from China in 2007 contains poison and the 2007 toys contain too much lead in the Chinese paint. The Chinese products have caused Americans to buy different products and have affected American businesses. I will not suggest that between 1835 and 2007 there is a single circle, without a doubt there are many just like a door spring. Fort Vasquez was small, only one hundred foot on each side. At one time there were twenty-five employees that called it home, plus any Indians, trappers and settlers that might have stayed there at any time. Horses and cattle were kept at or in the fort; therefore it must have been quite crowded at times. It is a very good place to visit and try to imagine what life would have been like a hundred and seventy years ago. I do not believe that it is possible to really understand what life was like, but this is a good place to try.
A CORNER GUARD TOWER OF THE FORT VASQUEZ FUR TRADING OUTPOST
One of the problems with saying something like, “The next time I send out a POTR I will send to you a –(specific item)—“, is that I have forgotten who I told that to. I said I would include a picture or two of the Vectra so here is a composite picture. The upper left hand picture is the first picture I ever took of the Vectra and it was still in the dealership. We had not even been inside of it more than a few minutes. Oddly enough it is still the best picture that I have taken of the outside even though it has been almost three years. The Vectra is forty foot in length, and has three slides. The areas below the two pipe looking protrusions just below the roofline are the slide-outs. The front one is a living room/kitchen slide, and the one in the rear is the bedroom slide. The storage compartments below the living room/kitchen slide move in and out with the couch, stove, and counters, while the bedroom slide is just tall enough to move the bed. The picture in the upper right is the dining table; sometimes known as our computer area. The slide was “in” when this picture was taken, so we have almost twice as much room to work when we are parked. The lower left picture is our kitchen. When the slide is in, the cabinets are pretty well blocked. There is limited access to the upper cabinets but not the lower ones. In this picture there are covers over the stove burners and the sinks. Just below the black burner controls you can see a corner of the dishwasher drawer. Way in the back to the left is a sliver of the door that covers the washing machine, and our rear TV. The lower right picture is of course our Sleep Number bed. When the slide is in the wall moves inward to about the position of the frame to the left of the window. We carry enough water and waste storage to allow about a week without hookup for a week if we are very frugal. If we are in a location with poor or no electric service we can run our generator as long as the diesel fuel tanks are about twenty-five percent full. The design of the tanks does not allow the generator to drain the fuel completely out, so there is always engine fuel. I do not know that for fact but that is according to the literature. We considered ourselves to be fortunate to get wood that was light. The dark walnut or cherry wood that are put in many motorhomes are beautiful, but they tend to create a feeling of closeness. We think the light colored wood gives the Vectra a brighter more open feeling. And we think that is important for 24/7/365 living. No matter how it is figured we live in a small house. It is good that we can get by with more limited possessions than we once did.
FOUR VIEWS OF OUR HOME ON WHEELS
It is fortunate that we do not develop a lot of plans for how we are going to travel around. There are many times that we only have a vague idea of where we are headed. Our destination might be “North” or perhaps “Somewhere in the Midwest” and often even less than that or “Somewhere.” Around the first of December we are scheduled to return to Mission, Texas for the winter. How we are getting from Colorado to Texas will depend on weather, our mood, and other factors that we may not know about yet. Right now it looks like it will be September 28th when we leave here. That gives us two months to make the trip to Mission, so that should be enough. Next year I want to go northeast, northwest, way west, and up north. If anybody has a suggestion of how to make the year about forty months long I would appreciate your input so I will be able to go everywhere I want to go.
Till Later This Is Doug Of
PEACE ON THE ROAD
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